logs | — villainy wears many masks

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— villainy wears many masks

WHO: aristaeus & others
WHERE: around the netherworld
WHEN: month of october
WHAT: catch-all
WARNINGS: will update as needed!

NOTES: Starters will be in the comments. Feel free to hit me up at

resurrectionist or at the event planning comment for plotting.

WILDCARD OPTIONS

CR: OPEN TO ALL; GEN-FAVOURED OFFERING:

KNOCK ON WOOD - General woodland encounters; he'll be escorting/teaming up with Johanna (exilire) but the woods are tricksy so it'll be easy to run into people. BONUS: Monster encounters
GO BIG OR GOURD HOME - Feast and Harvest Hunt meet-cutes. For the Feast, I'm interested in: grablenuts, will-o-the-whiskey and elysium particularly. For the Hunt, he'll probably be the hunter.
PARADE - No solid plans. He'd be really pressed about body-swapping.
WAYWARD SUN - Quite probably going to try to fight the Horseman to be honest.

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[ she tries to get to her feet. holds onto the cold stone of the wall, but it feels sticky under her hand. no, that's his shoes, on the pavement. it all blurs into one sensation.

he could help you, something whispers. he could teach you. you stupid bitch, you don't have to be attacking people.

she has suffered worse than this, she tells herself. dehydration in the desert. broken bones that she had set herself. how many pains has she staggered through, and emerged fine? she won't let this defeat her.

that's what she tells herself, right before she stumbles back to the alley floor. something soaks her pants. she looks down to see a puddle of rain gathered in a place where the concrete dips. seeing her reflection in it, outlined by the light of the fire she'd set, she smacks her hand down in the middle of it. ]

( while mavis has her existential crisis, aristaeus has made it to the park's exit.

irritation makes her presence flare. it saves him the effort of trying to hunt for her, at least, but it's a small comfort. in the back of his mind he can feel the churn of storm clouds gathering, can practically taste the sting of ozone on his tongue. )

Hold on.

( a threat and a promise. hold on, i'm coming. it's unlikely to be much of a comfort to her — this is bigger than both of them. )

[ everything is too bright and too painful. it turns to noise. it feels like her brain is melting, like it'll drip out her ears any moment now. the thoughts and feelings of passerby, and the closer-still sensations that leak through across the tether she'd made between herself and aristaeus, feel more real than the cold water against her palm. the latter fades away into the snow and static of the former.

breathing through her mouth, she tips her head back too-hard on the stone wall. closes her eyes. tries to push any of it away. it is a little quieter, when her eyes aren't also trying to process something. she pulls her hand out of the water, curls her knees up towards herself, tries to perceive less whatever that means.

she's still sitting curled up like this when he finds her, if only because it is taking everything she can to let the thoughts wash over her instead of overwhelm her. she couldn't get to her feet like this. that would require acknowledging her physical existence again and all the sensations that come with it, which have proven far too much for her. ]

( all the same, he's cautious as he approaches — partly out of habit and partly because he knows mavis well enough now to know how she reacts when she's cornered. )

You don't look so good.

( it's said as he stops in front of her. pauses to survey the damage before his attention shifts invariably back to her.

it's a pathetic sight. worst of all, he can't seem to find any pleasure in her discomfort, despite it being fully earned.)

Ask me. ( and then again, as if she needed the clarification: ) Ask me to make it stop.

[ his voice is so close. but then, it always has been. and there have always been footsteps. she could be imagining him — in another place, and here. like everything else.

she presses her palms to her closed eyes. grits her teeth. tries to push herself through it. she does not want his help. she does not want anything to do with that traitor. she had taken his help once and regretted it. doing it again feels like damning herself.

but her head is swimming and her chest is tight and it is not getting any better.

you hurt those people. you're going to hurt more because you're selfish and stupid and stubborn. so what if he betrays you again? the jarl was right. you're a monster, a danger to those around you. you deserve all that and more.

the memory surges to the surface. she is a child again, all too-thin limbs and skinned knees, in the jarl's tent. four adults loom around her, tears run down her face as he tells her that she has to leave the camp.

'and go where?' she asks, but he can't tell her. they can't help her. no one in the wilds can. her fingernails dig into her forehead. there is snot on her upper lip, and tears gather in her eyelashes, smeared by her palms. ]

Make it stop.

( it's precisely what he wants to hear, delivered in the least satisfying way imaginable. aristaeus' gaze slips to the side, as if considering whether or not he shouldn't just leave her here.

but then he hears it — or, rather, the echo of it. a voice more prominent than the others. a voice that is hers but not hers. )

It's right, you know. ( dropping slowly into a crouch in front of her. extending a hand, fingers curling as they tuck underneath her jaw.

her pulse is thundering. )

You are a danger. ( inhale, exhale. inhale, exhale. matching her breathing to his. drawing that racing heart into something less fraught. ) But you can't help that.

[ she chokes, at first, but she can feel her lungs expand and draw a deeper breath without her say-so, can feel her heart slow. her hands fall from her face, her shoulders loosening, her eyes opening.

yet beside the somatic relief, each sentence slips between her ribs like a fresh knife. he is only confirming what she already knows. yet somehow, hearing it said aloud deepens the wound. that grief feels far away though. it doesn't settle in her throat or in her cheeks. it is as any other thought. so is the panic induced by that realization. it exists somewhere outside of her body, and even the wrongness of that cannot fully settle.

because he is throttling it. she cannot help but slow her breathing, but slow her heart. he is killing her, she thinks. he is killing her and she cannot even raise an alarm.

she reaches up, grabs at his wrist, tries to shove it away from her face. she does not think of how the voices of the people around them have started to draw into more orderly rows, trickling over her more like a brook than a monsoon. ]

Good girl.

( it's the tone you'd use for a beloved pet. one that's performed a difficult trick for the first time. the expectations had been low — and yet.

his fingers remain pressed against her skin. the contact is necessary to maintain the effect, but the truth is that he's just reluctant not to touch her now that he can. )

Isn't that better?

( as if to say "look, it needn't be unpleasant all the time". it's a lie, of course, but a pleasant one. )

[ her mouth trembles, as if she wants to contradict him, but the feeling isn't there. instead, her body feels loose and relaxed. her hand closes around his wrist as if she still means to remove it, but she doesn't.

why would she? there's nothing to worry about anymore. with the stress of panic, whatever anger she might have directed towards him drains out of her. so instead, with an almost dreamlike slowness, she nods. ]

How are you doing this? [ it's not that she can't hear the voices. they run through her mind in tidy lines. he didn't suppress her ability to hear them — but her thinking is more ordered, relaxed. the noise doesn't bother her. ]

Come back with me, and I'll show you.

( it's unlikely that she'll be able to master it on the first try. it's not an advanced technique, as such, but it requires a level of knowledge of yourself that's difficult for a lay person to master.

even someone as talented as she is. )

Where?

[ she shouldn't be considering it. not really. but soothed as she is, she cannot rouse the self-protective urge to avoid the obvious danger. ]

Just off the Harbour.

( in the kind of place that would charitably be described as "having character". but it's cheap and (mostly) clean, so he has few complaints. )

[ if he lets go of her, will it stop? will the flood rush back in? will the neat rows that her thoughts and the thoughts of others been organized into spill back over into each other, turning back into that chaotic storm?

these considerations make her want to cling tighter to his wrist, make her want to keep her head still.

but though she is drunk on her own relief, that relaxation only makes her thoughts clearer. the harbour will cut off one of her avenues to run. she can't swim. how will she get away from him, then? useful as it would be to have what he knows, she cannot be cornered like an animal. ]

No. [ she will take this breather for what it is — time enough to get back to serene. ]

( he nods. it's the answer he'd expected — and, disappointed as he might be, he is prepared.

he doesn't remove his fingers so much as he shifts their position, moving away from her jaw to slip into her hair. )

Shame. Well — ( the grip tightens, sharp enough to hurt. that tiny thorn of pain magnifying and magnifying until it overwhelms her senses entirely. ) — I did offer.

[ she doesn't cry out. she never does, when she's in pain. a cry of pain anticipates a response, and she has long foregone that delusion. no one has ever been around to hear her shouts, and eventually, they had stopped coming.

but the lancing pain is so sudden that anyone else might also not even have the chance to. rather, her eyes shoot wide, chin tilted up by the grip of his hand in her hair. and then her brain clamps down on the feeling, like some kind of emergency shut-down procedure.

she slumps into him, head lolling to the side as unconsciousness sets in. ]

( she goes quietly in the end. this surprises him more than it should — he has some idea now of the life she'd lived. she was no stranger to pain, certainly. so he hadn't held back.

he gathers her into his arms. tucks her head into the crook of his neck. has she lost weight? he can't quite remember how it had been the last time he held her.

it's another thing that will need to be dealt with. but that's okay. they have plenty of time. )

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— villainy wears many masks

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we're going to pretend the icon is basically from that one gif

which one and why haven't i iconned it yet

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